A 15-year veteran of the TV news trenches, Jim has reported and anchored in large U.S. markets, including network-affiliated stations in Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Memphis.
During his journalism career, he’s interviewed presidents and death row inmates, Hollywood celebrities and everyday heroes. He’s covered natural disasters, scandals, murders, and yes, also the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Last Bridge to Memphis is his first novel.
When Jim was a young reporter in Memphis, Tennessee, he covered the Elvis Week beat, spending each day either at Graceland, or scouring the rest of Memphis seeking out interviews with relatives, friends, and associates of Elvis. At week’s end, after the news crews had folded up their gear and the pilgrims had trekked home, something mysterious happened. An anonymous envelope showed up at the TV station, directed to Jim, but no other identification.
The envelope contained a plain audio cassette tape–a homemade music recording, just a voice and a guitar.
The song was Mystery Train and the singer sounded eerily like Elvis. At the conclusion, the singer spoke a few words in a Southern twang.
Because no one ever came forward to say they’d sent it, the tape has haunted Jim’s imagination for decades. In fact, that raw homemade recording inspired Jim to envision a fictional world where a young TV reporter encounters the King, still walking in Memphis in the 1980s, a concept he eventually developed into Last Bridge to Memphis.